Young children often play with exposed controls of cooking devices, such as stoves, barbeque grills, and the like. They can accidentally turn on gas-fired or electrically-heated elements while playing with the controls, thereby creating a danger to themselves and others from explosion, fire, burns, gas, and the like. As such, there has been a long-recognized need for devices which protect children from the dangers associated with improper contact with controls for cooking devices.
A number of designs have been proposed to address this problem. One example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,438,974 to Maldonado. Maldonado shows a generally planar shield which is attached to a stove and substantially covers the control panel of the stove. The intent of the Maldonado device is to allow access to the control knobs of the stove only from above, thereby preventing the inadvertent access by young children from below. A similar approach is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,645,708 to Beall. Instead of covering the entire control panel, an alternative approach is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,720 to Sanchez which utilizes individual safety caps for each stove knob. However, the Sanchez device is rather bulky and difficult to apply and to remove. While differing in their details, the methods described above all rely on some form of external protection to prevent access to the control knobs. However, this approach has proven unsatisfactory due to the bulk and the complexity of the equipment required.
Thus, there remains a need for a more satisfactory knob assembly which includes a simple-to-use safety interlock device.